


the bridge that leads from you to me

by Daecyan_Shikoba



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Inspired by 3b spoilers, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Really Character Death, POV Alternating, POV Derek, POV Lydia, POV Stiles, Possibly Pre-Slash, Post season 3a, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 22:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1010994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daecyan_Shikoba/pseuds/Daecyan_Shikoba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It was going to be cold, then. It was November, after all. But it would always be colder, without Stiles.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Or the one where Stiles is dead, only not, and Lydia does something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the bridge that leads from you to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xerxies19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xerxies19/gifts).



> This gem is the product of the 3b spoiler from Teen Wolf's official twitter account [“Stiles loses a certain status this season.” - Jeff Davis] and the lovely Xerxies' ~~enabling~~ encouragement after I sent her my own angstier take on what Jeff could've meant. (We were on Skype, and the thought struck me, so I shouted the idea at her and she cried).
> 
> I started out with the intention of working out my desperate need to write angst, only it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to (shut up, I don't actually find this fic angsty so there). I wrote this with Placebo's version of 'Running Up That Hill' on repeat. All mistakes are my own, and I apologize profusely if the quality of this fic is actually as horrible as I fear. *cries in a corner*
> 
> [quick edit of notes to clarify that this takes place a year after the end of 3a]
> 
> _and if I only could_  
>  _make a deal with God_  
>  _and get Him to swap our places_

_~the bridge that leads from you to me~_

_Whatever had happened, it had happened the day after Stiles hallucinated his mother standing in the middle of the lacrosse field. He’d had a panic attack, when she flickered out of existence, and for the first time Stiles wondered if it was the Darkness, or if he had just finally lost his fucking mind. Maybe it was both. It didn’t really matter._

 

_Stiles was in a hallway, shivering and confused._

 

_The last thing he remembered - before waking up on the soft, dull grey carpet, his back pressed to the wall - was running through the Preserve, running for his life while some unnameable creature crashed through the trees after him. He remembered piercing pain as something bit into his calf, and the shock when he fell and his head smashed against a rock, the hot blood spilling from his temple and the bite wound._

 

_Then he woke up in the hallway. It didn’t look like it ended, and there were doors, open, as far as Stiles could see on either side. The fear spiked his heartbeat and flooded his veins with adrenalin. Stiles pushed up, hesitating only briefly, before he moved to the door closest to him._

 

_It slammed shut before he could reach it._

~~~

Lydia wasn’t with the others, when they found Stiles. She was with Derek, of all the people to be around, at his loft, trying to find what exactly it was the others were looking for in the Bestiary with only Derek’s shoddy description of it. It wasn’t exactly going _well_. Derek didn’t play nice with anyone who wasn’t Stiles or Scott, and saying he played well with Scott was pushing it. Theirs was more an older brother-little brother dynamic. Stiles was maybe the only one who understood Derek.

 

The point was, though, that Lydia and Derek were at the loft trying to figure out what it was that’d been mutilating the deer. Stiles was supposed to have shown up a half hour earlier, with coffee. Instead Lydia’s phone went off, Allison’s ringtone, and Derek went rigid in his seat when she answered, his head cocked to one side like he was listening to something far off. Allison’s voice was tear-choked in her ear, and Lydia felt the dread bubble up her throat.

~~~

The only thing she never understood was, why didn’t she sense it? She was a banshee, she’d been learning how to sense impending death and doom. Why hadn’t she sensed Stiles’?

~~~

Ethan and Aiden had had to pin Scott down, when they found Stiles. He’d howled, devastated and enraged, and fought against the twins’ hold on him desperately. It took Allison tasering him before Isaac could somberly explain that,

 

“It’s too late, Scott. Even giving him the Bite wouldn’t help.”

 

Lydia wouldn’t let Aiden touch her, after. Wouldn’t let Allison or Scott hug her, either. She didn’t...didn’t want their comfort, couldn’t bear to offer comfort in return. Part of her felt bad for it, because they loved Stiles too, but the other part of her - the part of her that she’d tried ignoring before and spent the rest learning it - was telling her not to give up.

 

Derek wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t look at anyone. He kept his head down, shoulders slumped, and avoided the others when he could get away with it. His reaction seemed to startle everyone but Lydia, like they hadn’t actually thought Derek would be that affected.

 

Lydia didn’t want to even think about the sheriff’s reaction.

 

She didn’t really want to think about anything. She just...showed up at Derek’s, settled into the couch - most times with a brief pause  - and went through the Bestiary like a woman possessed. Derek never acknowledged her presence beyond a sharp nod. Lydia was pretty sure she was the only one Derek acknowledged, anymore.

~~~

_The hallway went for miles. Maybe. It felt like miles._

 

_Stiles wasn’t sure, anymore. His perception of time felt skewed, like seconds passed were hours and hours passed were days and days passed were milliseconds of time. The only thing he knew was the confused panic, the fear, the frustration as every door he ran to slammed shut before he could reach it, the paranoia of something watching him run down the hallway._

 

_Sometimes Stiles could hear things, on the other sides of the doors, if he stood by them for a moment to catch his breath. Laughter. Growling. Singing. Screaming. His mother. Heart monitors flatlining. Gun shots. Cheering. Thunder and the roar of an enraged alpha werewolf._

 

_He heard his mother, sometimes. Her voice beckoning him further down the hall, always. Stiles felt like he was chasing her ghost down the corridor like his father chased her ghost around the bottle of whiskey. A never-ending race against time, into the past where she was alive and well and vibrant and laughing and happy._

 

_“Keep going, Stiles, keep going.”_

 

_Stiles didn’t want to keep going, but he didn’t want to stop hearing her voice._

~~~

“Stiles’ - ” Scott’s voice broke off, Stiles’ name cracking and filled with unshed tears, and Lydia looked up to watch Scott standing awkwardly in the doorway to Derek’s loft. Derek was glaring out the window, his shoulders tight with tension. Scott clenched his jaw, and Lydia imagined she could smell the salt of his tears and the bitter tang of his grief.

 

“What time?” She asked, saving him from the need to say the words.

 

Scott swallowed, hugging himself and ducking his head to glare at the floor. “Eleven, Friday morning.”

 

“Okay,” Lydia’s voice went quiet. “Okay.”

 

It was going to be cold, then. It was November, after all. But it would always be colder, without Stiles.

 

Scott nodded, pausing for a long moment before turning and leaving Lydia and Derek alone. Lydia turned back to her laptop, scanning the Bestiary, watching Derek’s shoulders slump from the corner of her eye. She imagined his grief was blood and ash, a hint of the tears he would never let himself cry.

 

She imagined hers smelled much the same.

 

But Lydia was determined to fix this, to fix everything. None of them could do this - life, happiness, feeling - without Stiles. She didn’t care that people said your happiness and existence shouldn’t be tied to another person. Those people probably didn’t know what it was like to feel so alone for so long, and then find someone, someone who burned hot and bright, who brought you into the center of a place where your family was chosen and where you felt loved and where you weren’t alone for the first time in as long as you could remember. Lydia would do whatever it took.

 

Lydia looked directly at Derek. “You’ll come with me, right? I don’t want to go alone.”

 

Derek turned to stare at her, his expression dark with sorrow. He nodded, after a moment. Like he understood what she was saying, like he knew she was giving him a reason to go when he didn’t think he deserved to grieve, too.

 

Because that’s what he thought. That he didn’t deserve to mourn Stiles, too. That it was his fault Stiles died. Like it was his fault his family burned, that Laura was ripped in half, that Erica and Boyd died, that Jackson was used to kill a bunch of innocent people, that Peter was a psycho. Lydia sometimes wondered how Derek managed to function most days, living beneath all that grief and guilt.

~~~

The graveyard was freezing, the ground covered in frost, and the air chilled. Everything was a muted quiet; muffled crying and soft whispers of condolences. There was a lot more people than Lydia initially expected, until she remembered how fickle humans were. Most of the students there hadn’t cared for Stiles, and the others hadn’t known him. The deputies were there, too, to arc around the sheriff like slumped wings dragging along the ground.

 

Lydia kept to the back with Derek, pressing against his side. It was probably the first time she’d made contact with anyone since that night, and definitely the first time Derek had allowed someone to touch him in just as long. She wondered, somewhere in the back of her mind where Stiles’ voice cracked jokes, that if she had reached out to Derek sooner, would he have let her put her hand on his arm the way he’d allowed Stiles to put his hand on Derek’s shoulder?

 

Derek pressed back, and then put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her further into his side. Lydia put her arm around his waist, squeezing as tightly as she could, and watched without hearing as some guy gave some kind of speech about afterlives and how tragic a life cut short was. It was probably a nice, solemn speech, but Lydia wasn’t very interested in generic words. Probably no one was, but most people were also comforted by them.

 

She could see Scott tucked between Allison and Isaac, sitting in the little fold-out chairs with the sheriff and Ms. McCall next to Stiles’ coffin. From where she was standing, it looked like his head was bent, like he couldn’t bear to look at the casket. Lydia cast her gaze away before it could catch the hunched form of the sheriff.

 

Instead she studied Stiles’ gravemarker, the cold, stark white of the marble. They were burying him beside his mother, her headstone dark gray with an angel carved into it above her name and the dates. Lydia hadn’t known Stiles, when his mother died. He used to say he’d had a crush on her since the third grade, but that never made much sense to her - the average age of third graders was eight, how old he’d been when his mother died - until she realized that Stiles was the same age as Allison, a year older than the rest of them.

 

Derek made a noise beside her, and Lydia glanced away to look up at Derek. He was glaring out at the treeline, too far for human vision to clearly make out who it was standing in the trees, but Lydia was certain she knew who it was. Why Peter had shown up, she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t seen him since Stiles had sent her to the loft to ask Derek where the root cellar was, and Peter had answered the door, and all the memories of what he’d done rushed -

 

Lydia’s thoughts froze, and she stilled, her body stiff with shock as the realization slammed into her. She made a noise, and she wasn’t sure if it was distressed or something else but Derek responded in kind, his arm around her shoulders tightening. Maybe he’d come to the same conclusion she had.

 

_Peter could help._

~~~

“You used me to bring yourself back to life,” Lydia stated coldly, staring Peter down as he stood next to his car, getting gas the day after Stiles’ funeral. “Derek and me, you used us to bring yourself back to life. Tell me how.”

 

Peter raised a single eyebrow. “I know what you’re thinking, and I know you’re intelligent enough to realize all the reasons why it won’t work.”

 

Lydia clenched her hands into fists in the pockets of her coat. “I’ll make it work.”

 

“You’re a very smart girl, Lydia,” Peter turned and finished up with the gas pump. “You shouldn’t waste your time trying to do something that won’t work.”

 

“I’m a banshee, and a genius. You’re a werewolf that used me and Derek to come back to life,” Lydia declared, her voice calm and furious. “I will find a way to do this.”

 

“Stiles is human, with no anchor to this world.”

 

Lydia bared her teeth in a frigid smile. “I will kill you again, Peter. I will light you on fire, and then I will cut you in half, and then I will bury the separate pieces of your body in two different spots, wrapped in wolfsbane, mistletoe, maybe put them in a box made from mountain ash.”

 

“Fine,” Peter grimaced. “I’ll write it down and leave it at Derek’s loft.”

 

“Good.”

 

Peter turned to get into his car, pausing before he shut the door to fix Lydia with a pitying look. “Don’t pin all your hope on this, Lydia. It probably won’t work.”

 

“Fuck off, Peter.”

~~~

_The millionth door slammed shut in Stiles’ face, and he let out a silent scream. He wrapped his hand around the door knob, his heart galloping in his chest, and listened as his mother read from “The Little White Horse” on the other side of the door. The tears burned in the corner of his eyes; he wanted so desperately to see his mother again, to curl into her arms, press his head against her chest and let her voice and heart soothe him to sleep._

 

_“Don’t open the door, Stiles. Keep going.”_

 

_Stiles let out a muffled sob and forced himself to let go of the doorknob. It hurt, a physical ache in the center of his chest. He could hear his mother’s voice, coming from somewhere further down the hallway, and coming from behind the door. He took a deep, ragged breath, and moved further down the corridor._

 

_Doors kept slamming on either side of him. His mother’s voice beckoned him forward._

~~~

Derek was curled in a ball on his bed when Lydia showed up at the loft a week later. She paused just inside the door, a little startled because she’d never actually seen Derek asleep. Usually, Derek snapped awake the moment his senses picked up another heartbeat approaching. Lydia slid the door shut and, when Derek didn’t wake up, moved further into the loft.

 

She wondered how much sleep he was getting, how much sleep any of them were getting. Scott had had dark circles under his eyes that morning, and Allison kept falling asleep in English. Lydia hadn’t slept much, either.

 

“Derek,” Lydia called softly, dropping her book bag onto the floor beside the table. She turned to study him a little closer, startling when she realized he was curled around one of Stiles’ hoodies, the red one that Stiles had bitched about going missing a few weeks before he died. “Derek, get up.”

 

Derek shot up like someone punched him, his eyes glowing electric blue and his fangs bared. He registered Lydia standing at the end of the bed a moment later, and he shifted back, the tips of his ears going red as he curled his fingers into the material of Stiles’ hoodie. Derek looked exhausted, sitting in the middle of his bed, clutching Stiles’ hoodie to him, his shoulders hunched in defeat.

 

“I need your help, Derek,” Lydia told him, and held out the notebook Peter had left her the day after she cornered him. “I don’t know what Peter told you, when he dropped this off. He told me it wouldn’t work, what I have planned. He’s wrong.”

 

Derek frowned and reached out a hand, taking the notebook and flipping it open to the first page. His eyes skipped across Peter’s handwriting, his expression shifting into something unreadable as he absorbed what was written. After another moment, Derek looked back up at Lydia, his eyes questioning.

 

Lydia smiled, the expression frail, and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Peter said it won’t work because Stiles is human and doesn’t have an anchor to this world. Peter doesn’t know anything, not about Stiles. So…will you help me? Please?”

 

He nodded after a moment, his jaw clenching with the stubborn determination Lydia had been feeling from the start. Lydia gave one sharp nod and turned back to grab her book bag. Everything she needed was in there; the flower petals, the knife, everything. There was a shovel in the trunk of her car.

 

“I haven’t told anyone else about this,” Lydia said and gripped the strap of her book bag tightly. “They would’ve tried to stop me, probably. And it might not work the first couple tries. I have to adjust the ritual, for obvious reasons.”

 

Derek didn’t say anything as he followed her out of the loft, not that Lydia expected him to. And she didn’t say anything when she noticed that he’d squeezed himself into Stiles’ hoodie. Their respective silence allowed Lydia to think about everything twice more, and allowed her to feel grateful that the sheriff hadn’t allowed the ME to do an autopsy, or the mortician to embalm Stiles. Lydia figured that an autopsy wouldn’t have been as problematic as embalming, but it was beside the point. Stiles’ body was whole, and no one had cut into it, poking around.

~~~

_Stiles leaned against the wall, next to the most recently closed door, panting for breath. Someone was crying on the other side, the sound muffled through the wood, and Stiles tried to remember why it sounded so familiar. Over the crying, it sounded like someone was splashing around in shallow water._

 

_“Derek,” Stiles’ voice called from behind the door, and Stiles jerked upright, his eyes going wide as he turned to stare at the wood grain and brass knob._

 

_This was...he was starting to remember, now. Again. He could remember what was happening behind that door; Cora crying into Boyd’s still chest, Stiles gripping Derek’s shoulder tightly in the only attempt at comfort he thought Derek would allow. The memory made something painful throb in his chest, brought an ache into his throat that he didn’t understand fully. He hurt for Derek._

 

_Stiles pushed away from the door, up onto his feet, and stumbled forward. The spaces between doors were growing larger the further he went, and he couldn’t hear his mother’s voice anymore. The only thing moving him forward was the fear of what was behind the doors, and the all-consuming darkness following behind him. He still couldn’t see the end of the hall, like it was never ending._

 

_He wondered how long he’d been stumbling down it, how long he’d gone on with only the memory of his mother’s voice. He hadn’t remembered much of anything else, but now other things were coming out of the fog. His father, Derek, Scott, Lydia._

 

“Stiles!”

 

“Keep going, Stiles, just a little further, just a little longer.”

 

_Stiles felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes. He wanted to tell them he couldn’t. He was too tired, and everything ached, hurt. He wanted to curl up into his mother’s arms and sleep forever._

 

“Stiles, please, for me?”

 

_“Yeah, okay,” Stiles whispered, and forced himself to move forward again. “Okay, Derek. I won’t leave you, not again.”_

~~~

Lydia slumped back against Stiles’ headstone, panting and exhausted. Their first two tries hadn’t worked, not quite. She thought that, maybe, it almost had, that Derek had managed to find Stiles. Their connection, though, wasn’t the problem. Lydia didn’t have enough power, not without Derek’s alpha powers to amplify everything.

 

Derek looked up at her from the grave, straddling the bottom portion of the coffin. His eyes were glowing their bright blue, and Lydia could see the growing despair there. She bit her lip and leaned forward to study Stiles’ body.

 

He was pale, Lydia would almost go so far as to say glowing, if she were apt to poetic descriptions. She wasn’t, though, and he merely looked like he was sleeping. Just sleeping. Like he hadn’t died in the woods a few weeks prior.

 

Lydia made a thoughtful noise and met Derek’s eyes. “I think we need to move him to the nemeton.”

 

Derek’s eyebrows shot up, and he lowered his gaze to study Stiles’ body. He glanced back up at Lydia a moment later, looking reluctant. Lydia didn’t really blame him; Derek was the one that’d have to lift Stiles out of the grave, and carry him to the car and then to the nemeton.

 

“I’m not strong enough to do this without your alpha powers amplifying the power of the ritual. It’d actually be easier if Stiles was a werewolf, but he’s human, so the ritual needs more power to make a useable connection, basically.” Lydia picked at her leggings. “But, Stiles is connected to the nemeton. He made a sacrifice to it, to save his father, and Ms. McCall and Mr. Argent. The nemeton might be willing to lend us the power we need to bring him back.”

 

She stood up and gathered the things she’d brought for the ritual, pulling a blanket out of her book bag. “Pull him up, I’ve got a blanket you can wrap him in,” she murmured as she finished putting everything away.

 

When she finished and turned around, Derek had wrapped Stiles in the blanket, cradling him against his chest tenderly. It created an ache just under her ribcage, and Lydia took a steadying breath, directing Derek to settle Stiles in the backseat of her car before they filled the hole back in.

~~~

Derek carried Stiles’ body bridal-style, his head tucked just underneath Derek’s chin like he was a slumbering child being carried to bed. It was jarring, distressing. Stiles still smelled of life, and he was warm to the touch. But there wasn’t a heartbeat. Lydia was confident, completely, that she could bring Stiles back. Derek was willing to give everything, do anything, to help her do it.

 

Stiles was important. He was the wit and snark, the one willing to spend three days without sleep researching. He’d taught Scott how to control his shift, in the beginning, and he’d saved Derek’s life countless times. And he’d kept coming back for Derek, and Derek had started trusting him against his better judgement. He trusted Stiles enough to believe him when he’d come to Derek about the Darach. He trusted Stiles enough, _cared about him enough_ , to reply when Stiles started texting him, after Derek and Cora left Beacon Hills. And when Derek had come back, after a two month road trip that left Cora and him in a better place and near-constant texting with Stiles, because he refused to leave Derek alone (not that Derek had minded), he and Stiles had been closer.

 

Derek wasn’t an alpha, not anymore, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to be one of Scott’s betas, but Stiles was _pack_.

 

He was _more_ , too, but they hadn’t talked about it. Derek had been content with that, too, because Stiles came to him when he couldn’t sleep, or when the Darkness was too much. They would sit beside each other on the couch, pressed into each other’s sides. And Stiles was still learning himself, growing into himself.

 

Derek regretted that the most, not opening his mouth and just _telling_ Stiles.

~~~

When they reached the nemeton, Lydia directed Derek to lay Stiles down on top of the stump while she started pulling everything out of her bag again. Derek did as instructed, settling Stiles down on his back, pillowing his head with Stiles’ hoodie. Lydia set everything up in a circle around the nemeton, taking ahold of Stiles’ left hand, stretching his arm out and settling the called-for flower petals - representing rebirth, faith and hope, love - in the palm of his hand.

 

Lydia took a moment, shivering, to watch as snow drifted down to cover everything in a soft blanket of white. It was quiet, still, almost oppressive, and light out despite the late hour. It hadn’t been so quiet in the cemetery. Everything seemed disjointed, disconnected from reality, and Lydia felt another rush of confidence flow through her veins.

 

It felt like the nemeton was in agreeance with their choice, like it was more than willing to help them.

 

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath of the crisp, frigid air. It filled her lungs, chilled her from the inside out, and with it came a strange sense, a niggling in the back of her mind telling her to trust instincts she didn’t even know she had.

 

Lydia listened.

 

“Derek, use this knife to make a small cut in the palm of Stiles’ right hand,” she commanded in a hushed voice, and it sounded distant to her own ears, as if she was in a trance. “Do the same for whichever of your hands will be most comfortable pressed against Stiles’.”

 

Derek glanced at her sharply, his eyes flashing blue briefly, before he quelled whatever his reaction was. He gave a small nod and kneeled on the stump, taking the knife from Lydia and pressing the tip against the center of Stiles’ palm, making a small cut. Derek startled back, eyes wide, when blood welled up, and glanced back at Lydia uncertainly.

 

Lydia’s heart stuttered, once, and her lips parted on a small, shocked exhale. “He’s not actually dead,” she breathed.

 

Derek made a wounded noise, staring at Stiles with wide eyes, and made a cut at the base of his left hand. Keeping the small cut from healing, he pressed it to the small wound on Stiles’ palm, sliding his fingers between Stiles’ lax digits, curling them loosely until his fingertips touched the knuckles of Stiles’ hand. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Stiles’ sternum, and closed his eyes tightly.

~~~

_Everything was white, and where it wasn’t white it was Darkness._

 

_Stiles pressed his hands against his eyes, hissing a moment later when a sharp, stinging pain blossomed in the palm of his right hand. He pulled it away, gaping at the blood welling up from a cut in the center of his palm, bright red against pale skin, vivid where it dripped down onto the white floor._

 

_Snarling started up behind him, from the darkness that was ever steadily crawling towards Stiles. His heart lurched into his throat, thrumming nervously, and Stiles started forward. He ran, and the growls, the roaring, snarling sounds grew louder and closer. It was all Stiles could hear, over his pounding heart and gasping breaths, and the panic crashed through him anew._

 

_There was terror, and panic, and beyond that - emotions that weren’t his - was grief and longing and endless love. Silent voices begging Stiles to keep going, phantom arms wrapping him in warmth. Encouraging him to push forward, to fight through his fear and the exhaustion and pain._

 

_Stiles stumbled, smashing into the wall, his hand smearing a streak of bright red against the white of the wall. The bright white of the place was beginning to feel familiar, like he’d been there before, the memory right on the cusp of his awareness. He didn’t have time to piece everything together, though. Whatever was chasing after him - and there was something chasing him, he could feel the hot breath of a predator on the back of his neck - was closing in._

 

_“Stiles!”_

 

_The voice startled him, and Stiles nearly tripped again as his eyes locked onto Derek standing at the end of the hall, looking pale and frantic. Another burst of adrenaline shot through him, and Stiles took off in a dead run. His lungs burned, and his legs felt like jelly; there was a stitch in his side, and his eyes were watering, but Stiles fucking refused to slow down or stop._

 

_“Derek!” He gasped._

 

_Derek reached out with his left hand, and blood dripped from a cut on the base of his hand to the floor. Stiles felt a surge of shock, and something that he likened to electricity but couldn’t actually name, when he saw it. His mind was racing along with the rest of him, and in that moment Stiles wanted nothing more than to bury himself in Derek’s arms and never let go._

 

 _He could remember, now, why he couldn’t leave Derek alone. Why he felt so desperate to get back, when he’d started hearing Derek’s voice. Derek was important. Derek was his anchor, when the Darkness tried to swallow him whole. Stiles_ loved _him, and he hated that he’d forgotten that._

 

_When Stiles finally slammed into Derek’s arms, the solid warmth of him startled Stiles so fiercely he tried recoiling. He didn’t think he would ever actually reach Derek, not with the way the hallway seemed to grow even longer the moment he’d started running towards the werewolf. Derek’s arms wrapped around Stiles, squeezing him so tightly Stiles felt his ribs creaking in protest._

 

_Stiles clung back just as hard, crying into the curve of Derek’s neck._

 

_“Stiles,” Derek murmured against his temple, pressing his nose to the soft strands of hair there and taking a deep breath. “Stiles, will you come home with me?”_

 

_“Derek, that’s the stupidest question you could ever ask me,” Stiles mumbled into the skin of Derek’s throat. “I know we haven’t...talked, about anything, or, really done anything, but… If you think I wouldn’t fucking follow you into hell - ”_

 

_Derek cut him off with a kiss, sharp and desperate._

~~~

It was like someone had cut the last rope holding something incredibly heavy over them, and the resulting crash as whatever it was plummeted back to earth forced Lydia to take a few staggering steps back at the same moment a brilliant flash of light blinded her. She blinked away the spots in time to see Stiles launch himself into Derek, knocking them both off the stump of the nemeton and crashing into the dirt and leaves and snow. Lydia let out a hysterical giggle, her knees giving out, and she dropped down into the snow too, her eyes burning with tears.

 

“Fuck,” Stiles muttered, his teeth chattering, “I’m fucking cold, what the hell?”

 

Lydia balled up the blanket they’d wrapped him in earlier and tossed it over to Derek, watching as he wrapped the thick material around Stiles’ shoulders while simultaneously pulling Stiles tighter against his chest. Stiles hid his face in Derek’s neck, shivering, and it looked like he was bathing in the heat Derek’s werewolf genetics guaranteed he was giving off. Lydia bit back the soft smile threatening to creep over her face as Derek closed his eyes tightly and pressed his face to the top of Stiles’ head.

 

“You’ve technically been dead for a few weeks. It got cold.”

 

“ _...What?!_ ”

 

Lydia couldn’t stop the relieved laughter, and Derek huffed fondly as he nuzzled into the space between Stiles’ neck and shoulder. There would be time to explain, later, after they called everyone to Derek’s loft. She knew some people who’d like to see Stiles again.

  
Not that she blamed them.

_~fin~_


End file.
